Tuesday, November 12, 2013

22 years is long enough!

As promised on my Sunday blogs, I have colored my froggy.  Originally drawn in ink in 1981 to accompany an article titled "Our Tree Frogs Don't Like Tress," in the Green Mountain Gazette, it turns out to have been prescient.  At the time the article was written, this frog was known as the Pacific Coast Tree Frog, or just Pacific Tree Frog, and in most field guides as Hyla regilla. Compared to the tree frogs I knew in Florida and Louisiana, this one definitely did not have the tree-climbing habit.  Its suction cup toes works on glass and other smooth surfaces, but the frog was nearly always found on the ground or in small shrubs, not high up in trees.  In the article, I spoke of how the name Hyla, which applied to over a dozen species in the Southeast, inspired me to name my first daughter after it.  The original ink drawing has languished in my files ever since.  Now the frog has a new name, the Pacific Chorus Frog, and it has been determined to belong to the Chorus Frog genus, Pseudacris, although still in the Family Hylidae.  Hyla
makes a nice girl's name, but not Pseudacris.  The drawing is not meant to accurately represent a specific tree frog but rather convey the general idea of a frog with toe disks that can stick to things.  This one is probably a bit overweight, getting ready for a long winter perhaps.

No comments:

Post a Comment